


More On Latent Telepaths

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [98]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Psi Corps, What do P-ratings mean?, Worldbuilding, shameless self-insertion, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 20:32:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14065014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: "What's a 'light scan'? And can latents feel them or not?"The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	More On Latent Telepaths

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

Someone asked, after reading [the first essay about what happened to Ivanova's mom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14055426), why, if Susan Ivanova was a latent telepath who couldn't do very much, the following conversation would have happened in _Ship of Tears_ (when the command staff think Bester's come to the station to scan them):

          Sheridan: "I need to speak to Ivanova alone for a moment. Susan, Bester still doesn't know you're a latent telepath."

          Ivanova: "No, he doesn't, but... You're not gonna do this to me, are you?"

          Sheridan: "If he's going to risk scanning someone, he'll grab the first person that walks in the door, in case he doesn't get another chance."

          Ivanova: "I can't block a Psi Cop."

          Sheridan: "No, but you told me that you can sense instantly if someone is scanning you."

There's a lot wrong here, starting with the fact that he does know she's a latent telepath, if not from her file than just from being in the same room with her (not that he cares she's one, of course). (And "grab the first person who walks in the door"?! As opposed to the person who actually has the information he wants?!)

But the point I need to clear up is that though Ivanova may believe she is capable of sensing if he casually scanned her... **nope, she's wrong.** (And it seems what they're talking about is a deep scan, not a light scan anyway! They are so confused.)

Ivanova thinks she may be able to feel if he scans her because she was able to feel when her mother (a weak telepath) made contact, and she may have also felt similar sensations with other weak telepaths, but Psi Cops (especially highly-trained and experienced Psi Cops like Bester) are a different ball of wax. She just doesn't know it, and Sheridan is even more clueless than she is.

Not that this matters for the plot, because he's not actually showing up to scan them, but I do need to make it clear that experienced Psi Cops can casually scan weaker telepaths without them feeling it.

Some examples from canon:

Final Reckoning, p. 82:

          "And fencing normals was satisfying. Years as a Psi Cop had taught him to read body and facial language without scanning, but if he really needed to, he could pick up their strategies [in other words, lightly scan them] without them noticing. He didn't feel bad about it - men with long arms didn't feel bad about having more reach, after all. But he was careful. Though he hadn't met any other telepaths who used the salle, you never knew when one might come in. Another P12 might just notice him using his abilities, even at a very low level."

 **Another P12 - not a weaker telepath, let alone a latent.** Shortly after, on p. 83:

          "A train arrived, but it wasn't his. He stood there, frowning, some of his good mood dissipated.

          "And he caught someone watching him, felt a telepathic touch.

          "He jerked his head around, and a face jumped out of the crowd. An older face, pale, snub-nosed, weak-chinned. He recognized it in an instant - he had always had a good memory for faces.

          "A telepath. What was his name? Askern? Ackeron? Ackerman. He had worked at one of the reeducation camps...

          "The fellow looked away. Bester managed a light scan, one he knew would be undetectable to a telepath of Ackerman's feeble abilities. Bester looked familiar to Ackerman, but the fellow hadn't placed him. The beard made a big difference."

**Ackerman, a weak telepath, but nonetheless strong enough to be in the Corps, didn't feel it. Yes, Bester could lightly scan him without him knowing.**

**So yes - if Bester had wanted to lightly scan Ivanova, he could have done so without her knowing.**

**(Meanwhile when Ackerman paid attention in this way to Bester ("telepathic touch," "light scan," all the same thing), Bester felt it.)**

Ivanova and Sheridan are just... in the dark. (In lots of ways.) They don't know much about how telepathy works (or much of anything that has to do with telepaths and the Corps, sadly).

To be really clear, what we're talking about when we say "lightly scanning" is _paying attention_. Surface thoughts can come through unconsciously, whereas what's meant by "lightly scanning" is something a little more intentional - paying attention. Can someone as strong and skilled as Bester pay attention to something without other people being able to feel he's paying attention? Absolutely.

It just gets confusing because that society "others" telepathy so much, distinguishing it from all other senses and faculties, that there's this whole other vocabulary developed to set it apart (like the rating system developed to set people apart). ([Shhh - telepathy is complicated](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12272781).)

But don't let the words confuse you.

What we mean is that different people can pay attention to the same thing, but yet what they become aware of as a result may be different - same action, different result. Different people's senses take in different information, and for different people, paying attention (or otherwise having certain intent) can lead to different outcomes.

For a non-perfect analogy, consider this - most of you are looking at a screen right now, and seeing a complex mess of black spots on a white background. But because you are trained to read, you know they constitute letters and words, and so without any effort at all, when you see these black spots, you suddenly have _meaning_ in your head. And all you had to do was pay a minimal amount of attention to the black spots. Someone else, who could not read English, could focus on the same spots all day and get no meaning at all.

You read this paragraph, so you know what this feels like.

Vis-a-vis telepathy, the cause for the effect is different - the combination of sensory ability and learned skill is different for learning how to read text and for being aware of others' thoughts. I'm not saying that much is the same. My point is that we are all, in some way, familiar with the experience of paying attention to a sensory stimulus and automatically (or with minimal attention) becoming aware of meaning - in written text, in spoken language, or in some other way, and that we are all aware of cases wherein we can attend to something and get meaning, while others can attend to the same thing and not.

**"Light scanning" just refers to a degree of intentionality (paying attention) that may or may not be necessary to pick up surface thoughts, or to get more detail. That's all this is: intention, which comes with more awareness of the thing you're attending to. (And telepaths are people for whom[others' thoughts are part of their sensory milieu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10978596).)**

Susan Ivanova, as a latent telepath, can sometimes feel if someone's paying attention to her in this way. And Bester, a highly-trained and experienced Psi Cop, can pay attention to things in that way, while ensuring that most other people can't feel him doing so.


End file.
